I've already posted other drawings of Darth Vader, but he's a popular character - and I like drawing him - so I thought it was time to do another!

I'd also been wanting to draw some TIE Fighter Pilots and thought up an idea so that I could include them with Vader in the same piece...

If you've seen the original Star Wars movie - you might remember the scene where Vader gets a couple of pilots to follow him into battle against the rebels. I couldn't help think that they took it a little too leisurely as they marched off round the corner like they were heading straight to the fridge for a snack. What they needed was a red flashing emergency light to generate some urgency! So here they are - red light on - and whadya know - they're all running to their ships now!

In reality I just made that up because I wanted to draw the characters in a dynamic pose - and with some red highlights (which always looks good against black). But I hope my little backstory helps sell the idea!

This is an original depiction of George Lucas's characters - drawn in Photoshop using a Wacom pad. I might put up a work-in-progress of this if anyone's interested because I took a couple of screenshots at various stages. You might also find it interesting that I used Google Sketchup to create a 3D model of the background to ensure that the perspective is right (after having sketched it out freehand first). This is a reduced resolution version of the original which is 600dpi.

Thanks Carter - and sorry for the slow reply (although I see you replied to yourself anyway). I couldn't remember how long this took - but I knew it was a long time. It was at a very high resolution (the original is 600dpi - but it's just a low-res version here) which meant that I could put a lot of detail in - but the downside is that it takes a looooong time! It also took longer cos I was messing with Google Sketchup to get the perspective right for the background.

Spectacular lighting and coloring! I really like that they're striking a pose as if they somehow knew an artist in a faraway galaxy would immortalize them in such an awesome drawing! This would make an excellent Imperial recruitment poster. Lord Vader would be most pleased.

Thank you! All that detail you noticed (thanks) took a long while to paint - possibly about 20 hours all told - a little bit each day over a couple of weeks! I like to keep at it until I get it as good as I can. Seems like it was worth it